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In Political Sign Battle, Thievery, Acid and Jelly

After several Obama signs were stolen from her mother’s yard, Josephine Wiseheart posted a handwritten message.Credit
Josephine Wiseheart

SOUTH MIAMI, Fla. — Two weeks ago, Hillary Wiseheart plunged an Obama-Biden campaign sign into her front lawn, a defiant stance amid the riot of Romney-Ryan signs in her well-kept neighborhood. The next day, it was gone.

Ms. Wiseheart donated $5 to President Obama’s campaign for a new sign and planted it. Gone. By the fifth sign, her daughter, Josephine Wiseheart, 31, who almost nabbed the sign-snatcher one late afternoon, put up a second, homemade sign standing sentry next to the new Obama sign.

“Every time you STEAL our sign, you help DONATE to Obama’s campaign. Thanks for the SUPPORT.” The next morning, Obama was gone. Left untouched was Josephine’s hand-scrawled sign of gratitude.

“In 2008, we had one sign, and it stayed up the whole time,” said Mrs. Wiseheart, a psychologist and Miami native. For the first time, she feels ill at ease in her own neighborhood, she said. “It has made me very upset. I’m 67. I’ve never had this experience. It feels like hatred.”

Along tidy, landscaped yards in these parts, political signs are as common as sprinklers (although Romney-Ryan outpaces Obama-Biden), and partisans from both parties are guilty of high jinks. Signs for Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney are being swiped, mangled, shredded, spray-painted and urinated on all around Miami and in places farther afield. They serve as proxies, easy targets, for all the fury, disappointment and disgust the presidential race has stirred, at least among some voters.

Sometimes, irate voters go on the record with their outrage; they call the police, file a report. Most often, though, they reserve their complaints for friends, neighbors and the campaign offices that sell the signs and offer up escalating tales of vandalism.

One man found his Obama signs (and grass) despoiled by acid. A series of Fire Obama signs that stretched down a road last week were sliced in half, with precision, so only Obama remained. Passers-by called the police when they spotted a bunch of Obama signs floating in a canal. A house with an Obama-Biden sign was pelted with eggs (and Halloween isn’t even here yet). One set of dueling neighbors, eager to outdo each other, affixed more and more signs to their yards; one morning the Romney lawn sat nearly barren.

Then there was the man in a neighborhood shaded by gumbo-limbo trees who watched, with a grin, as his dog urinated on a sign (the name on it will go unmentioned). He later told friends that his dog had participated in early voting.

“It’s a personal statement when your home has a political sign up front,” said Bob Goldstein, the president of the Democrats of South Dade Club, which has helped staff an Obama volunteer office that dispenses signs. “So when someone steals it from you, it’s more than a personal affront.”

Headed back to her Cutler Bay home with a new stash of Romney-Ryan and Fire Obama placards in the back of her car, Michelle Raghunandan, 48, said her determination has only hardened with each vanishing sign.

On Sunday night, after three weeks of theft, she found her signs still there on her lawn, only they had been mangled and tossed aside. She hopped back in her car and picked up more signs.

“I feel it’s an invasion of privacy, though my husband says I’m overreacting,” said Ms. Raghunandan, exasperated. “I’m beside myself. We all have our opinions, our freedom of speech. I can get my point across without violence.”

Bumper stickers are not immune, either. Josephine Wiseheart said she was at a gas station last week when her boyfriend pointed to her bumper: A Romney sticker had been plastered atop her Obama sticker. Worse still, one woman reported to the campaign office that somebody had shredded her bumper Obama sticker and then, oddly, coated her car with grape jelly.

Trying to trap thieves, or at least deter them, has become the newest front-yard game. In Orlando, Fla., a Romney supporter finally nailed her sign to a tree, but not well enough; it disappeared soon after. Rodrigo Zuñiga, 23, a student and banker, has switched on his outdoor security cameras in Miami, a security-conscious city, in the hopes of snaring the culprits (at one point he got so angry he tempted vandals with six Romney-Ryan signs, using Fire Obama as the exclamation point). And Carol Nagengast threaded fishing wire through an Obama sign and tethered it to a tree, hoping to flummox the thieves (so far it has worked). Vaseline is also a much-used used counteroffensive tactic.

With Romney signs far outnumbering Obama signs around here, the most aggrieved voters appear to be those who support Mr. Obama. Some voters, they say, simply won’t put up Obama signs for fear of vandalism.

“People don’t want to get egged,” said Barry White, 74, who saw his sign defaced by acid. He left it on his lawn for several days, bearing witness to the level of enmity in Miami, he said. Tuesday night it was stolen.

Neighborly overtures, which are relatively uncommon to begin with in Miami, have suffered, too, depending on the names the lawns advertise.

Ms. Wiseheart said she is simply demoralized, and worried about Mr. Obama’s prospects here. For a time she wore her Obama-Biden T-shirt when she walked her dog in the neighborhood. But the other day, someone “flipped me the flying creature,” she said, and hurled an obscenity at her and her dog. Not long after, she saw a car driving down the street. It appeared to swerve suspiciously in her direction. She froze, then chalked it up to paranoia.

“It doesn’t feel good,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on October 30, 2012, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: In Political Sign Battle, Thievery, Acid and Jelly. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe